Longleat Looking for those Roach!

Banana Steve · #1 10-08-2010, 06:59 PM

Well it’s been a few years since I fished Longleat, I think the last time was with Twiddler.
Last Saturday saw me back there and looking for those hard fighting Roach that Longleat used to be famous for. I was accompanied by Simon N and his Partner Cindy.

I approached my method of attack in my usual fashion and as most people know I love fishing the Waggler, so you guessed it, I was on the waggler. I set up to fish on the drop so I would pick up the roach through the layers of the water. Well as I started to fish the bites were a little slow and It was a few minutes before the first bite. This produced a small Roach and to be honest this is what I expected as the bigger fish take their time to move on to the feed.

Because I was using maggot I knew that I was less likely to attract the Carp. However, this ploy didn’t work for Simon, as he was into a Carp within the first hour of arriving and as he was fishing a light set-up. The Carp made certain that it gave a good show for its self.

However, like most commercial fisheries the Carp have been through the wars where anglers have lost respect for their sport, as you can see by the condition of the Carp and it’s damaged dorsal, and the mouth looked more like parrots beak.

As the day progressed Simon and Cindy both caught well, including a 9lb Mirror caught by Cindy.

As my day progressed, I found that the large roach didn’t want to play ball. I was strugling to produce the big roach. So I took a step back and re-assessed my situation. Was I feeding enough? or was I feeding to little? was the hookbait going to the bottom? or was it to shallow? The first thing I did was re-plumed the depth and I found that I was to shallow and I was a couple of inches short of the bottom. So re-set the depth of the float and started again. But the question was, “Were the fish there”. Only way to find out was to start fishing again. So I started feeding again with a half pouch of maggot every cast. Instead of using 2 maggots as I had earlier I went to a single maggot on a size 18. This seemed to do the trick, after a couple of minutes I hooked into a large skimmer, which in Longleat lakes can be fun, due to the water being shallow they fight quite well and even tail walk as Cindy found out as well. The Skimmer was no more than 1.5lb but it was a better fish, but yet still no big roach, had they been eradicated?

Whilst I was feeding I started to notice the water boil every time I fed, and I saw some big swirls taking the feed. They were not big as in Carp big but as Big Roach Big. So I shallowed up and the first cast I hooked into a good Roach but lost the fish at the net, the fish was in the 8oz+ mark. With the water still boiling after every feed I shallowed up even more to around 12” and this did the trick as I started to produce some good quality Roach and I noticed that these were in very good condition, for which I came to the conclusion that they are no longer fished for at Longleat and it might explain why they took so long to go onto the feed.

With the average size of 8oz’s I started to catch well and with over 30 good sized fish, my overall weight must have been 15lb+, which in October is not bad. I must confess though I am sorely out of practice with speed fishing for roach on the waggler, I must have dropped more than I caught! I guess that is because I no longer match fish and I have become a lazy and just let it happen, or is my old age catching me up?

I really enjoyed the day and I think both Simon and Cindy enjoyed themselves as well. Maybe I won’t leave it so long to fish Longleat again!!!!!!